


a gap in space

by lna1999



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - School, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Roommates, lincoln is mentioned but he's not really in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:41:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23298727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lna1999/pseuds/lna1999
Summary: "she isn’t the problem, but she makes thinking about the problem so much more complicated because when she’s around your mind goes blank and all you can think about is her, her, her."orlexa and clarke are roommates after grad school and get a little closer after a hard experience
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 7
Kudos: 70





	a gap in space

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my first actually story on here and it might flop and i wrote it last night at like 1 am because corona has me stuck at home and im so bored so here we go. might be a small series i dont really know right now

it’s january and you don’t think you’ve ever seen lexa this bad; she hardly says anything around the room and you have a hard time getting her to eat even when you make her favourite things. 

it’s fourteen days into the month and she has hardly left your shared room except to go to class and you’re running out of ideas to make her smile. it’s always been easy to make her smile, but this month she seems broken, shattered, lost. you’re not used to this, she’s normally light, upbeat, unbearably happy, but something is terribly wrong, you feel it laying heavy in your chest. she’s just your roommate, and you know that she can take care of herself, but something is surging up in you, telling you to watch over her.

so you spend your nights watching nature documentaries with her that you normally find terribly boring. you don’t really care too much about the mating dances of the bird-of-paradise, but the tiny feathered creatures leaping around draws a small soft chuckle from her lips and you find yourself smiling despite yourself. 

soon when you’ve watched two segments of the show that are each an hour long you gather your things and quietly tell her that you’re heading to bed because you have an eight am class tomorrow. she looks up at you and something squeezes inside of you when you see the emotions normally present in her eyes have disappeared. you wonder what has happened that made them skitter away somewhere locked up inside her brain but you’re too afraid that if you ask she’ll retreat into herself even more. you’re too busy thinking these thoughts to have heard her words and ask her to repeat them again. she tucks a loose brown curl behind her ear and your eyes follow the motion as she whispers softly that she told you goodnight. you smile warmly at her, and drop your hand down to squeeze her shoulder as you pass and pretend you don’t feel her jump as you make contact.

//

three days later it’s 2 am when you wake up to the sound of screaming. fear wraps its fingers tight around your heart as you lay still in your bed for five seconds, ten seconds, a minute, listening so hard you’re paralyzed and can’t move. 

the second scream sends you to your feet, scrambling to pull your cactus decorated shorts in the pitch blackness of your room. something clatters to the floor in your struggle and you smell the sharpness of what must have been a bottle of perfume. your heart pounds in your chest and you still can’t see and perfume fumes have lodged themselves into the deepest part of your brain by now but you’re pushing yourself out the door and into her room with a wire hanger in your hand because lexa is the one who is screaming.

when you throw open her door you expect to see another person in the room, someone standing over her bed about to hurt her and come for you next. your heart finally restarts when you come face to face with more darkness and just her lightly whimpering in her bed. she’s having a nightmare and you’re certain you almost had a heart attack, but you shuffle across the floor to her bed to save her from her dreams.

you watch her for moment, not sure what to do, and another scream tears you from your thoughts and you reach out to lightly grab her shoulder with your hand. the second you make contact with her bare skin she is awake, you startle backwards as her eyes meet yours, dilated and scared and glowing bright green in the moonlight. you whisper an apology and tell her that you heard her screaming and was scared someone was in the room. she doesn’t move, just looks at you and you’re not entirely sure if she’s even breathing. 

your apology comes to a spluttered end as you tell her that you’ll leave her to go back to sleep. you look into her eyes for a few more seconds and give a small nod and turn to walk toward the door and you’re almost out of the room when you nearly miss her soft plea

‘clarke, stay…. please’

you turn back towards the bed and she has never looked so small, huddled under a small mountain of tangled covers and she just looks broken. it takes you no time to cross the room and delicately climb under the covers to lay on the pillow next to her. you intended to lay flat on your back and give her space in the bed, but nearly ten seconds after you’re settled she is clinging to you and burying her face in your neck, flinging her arm across your stomach. 

you hesitate awkwardly, your body stiff and your arms raised slightly on either side of you despite her pinning one of them down. but as she makes no move to shift away from you, your body slowly relaxes and your arms fall naturally around her. your arm pinned under her holds her firmly to your side while you reach the other across you to tangle gently in her curls. her hair is silky soft, way softer than you thought, like duck fluff, and her breath is warm tickling your neck and she smells like honey and something subtly floral and something warm, tight, yet floaty ignites in your chest at the feeling of her in your arms. you’re not sure if you mind it.

// 

you slowly blink sleep away and are allowing your eyes to adjust to the light streaming in the windows when you remember you’re not in your room. your hand automatically moves to your right, subconsciously searching for her body in the bed, but she isn’t there.

you open your eyes fully and prop up on your elbows and there she is, settled just at the edge of the bed as if she’s about to get up. you hesitate to move, you don’t want to scare her away, and the way she’s perched looks like any movement you make could send her fleeing out the door never to return. she looks so fragile, like she just might break if even a feather were to touch her.

‘i have nightmares because my parents died in a car crash. it was janurary 28, i was a sophomore in high school and i lived’

the words tear you from your internal debate and suddenly your mind is clear. you don’t know what to say to her, not really, because what do you say in response to that?

before you can stop yourself you’re sitting up behind her and your hand is laying on her shoulder and pulling her back toward you. and just like that, she shatters.

sobs rip from her throat at she struggles to turn in your arms. it’s an awkward position and you know your leg is going to ache if you stay in it too long but you push that down because she needs you right now. you brush your fingers lightly through her hair and hold her to you, and you don’t bother telling her it’s okay because clearly it isn’t. instead you whisper to her over and over one simple thing, ‘im here. im here. im here’.

you’re not sure how long you sit there while she cries, maybe just a few minutes, maybe a whole hour. she’s still sniffling in your arms when she begins to speak. her sentences are rushed and quick as if she’s trying to get it all out for good, and the story she tells you is painful and horrible, and you can’t help but hold her so much tighter. 

she spells out for you the day her and her parents were just on their way to the movies when the car skidded on black ice. she tells you how her father was driving and her mother was in the passenger seat and she sat buckled in the middle of the back seat with two seat belts because she was making a joke about her fathers driving and that joke saved her life. she tells you how they spun for what seemed like forever before they finally crashed into something, how she was never sure what because she had her eyes squeezed shut the whole time, how she woke up in the hospital an orphan, how she had to go live with her grandmother in virginia afterwards and never tells anyone about this story ever because it hurts too bad.

she shakes and breathes heavy when it is all out of her body and her weight collapses on top of you. you just sit there and hold her, stroking her back and her hair and trying to hold her still while she pieces herself together. 

when she finally moves away from you, a blush spreads across her cheeks and her curls are tangled and messy and she won’t make eye contact with you. you reach out and grab her hand, the movement sends her eyes up to lock with yours. 

‘thank you’, you manage to squeeze out as her watery green eyes bore into your own. she breaks eye contact to stare down at her stormy grey comforter, but you swear you see relief flicker across her face. 

//  
when the month is finally past and february first comes, it’s as if you can physically see the weight being lifted off her shoulders. her eyes are filled with light once more and her smile slowly returns to her face.

you’re not sure where you stand with her anymore, not really. it seems that in a matter of days you went from being old friends to being an inseparable duo.

if you weren’t in class you were back in your shared apartment doing something with her. sometimes you sat in silence with her as she read a book and you did homework, or you were urging her to come and help you cook because let’s be honest the only thing you know how to cook are microwave meals. watching tv with some parts of your bodies touching at all times, staying in her room to ward away nightmares and always waking up tangled together in a mess of warm limbs and soft sheets, playing small card games to pass the time, gently braiding her hair after she came from the shower smelling sweet with flushed cheeks. these aren’t things that just friends do, you know that, but you don’t know what it means.

you’ve known lexa for years. you were closer in college but were never really as close as you could have been. and yet you know so much about her. you now know her life hasn’t been easy or kind or simple, or anything that she deserves. you know what she likes for breakfast, what all her favourite things are, books, colors, season, you name it. you know what it feels like to have her in your arms, and a long time ago you knew what it was like to kiss her.

but you don’t know what it means. you think you’d like to kiss her again, but you just don’t know.

//

a week later you still aren’t any closer to figuring out what anything means, so you do what you know how to do best, avoid the problem.

she isn’t the problem, but she makes thinking about the problem so much more complicated because when she’s around your mind goes blank and all you can think about is her, her, her. 

so you avoid her at all possible costs.

after just a day of avoiding her she confronts you about it asking you directly if you are making an effort to stay away from her. your heart stops for a moment and then resumes beating, you weren’t prepared for her to actually ask you. you lamely stutter out an answer that sounds way too much like yes and leave out the whole part about telling her why because you don’t even know why yourself.

and you can see the hurt wash across her face the moment you speak. shit. 

you reach out to grab her hand and try and stammer out an excuse but you’re floundering because it’s only been a day and your head is so clogged up with everything and she wasn’t meant to catch on this fast, how did she catch on this fast.

but she isn’t listening and pulls her hand from your grasp and grabs her jacket from the hook and is out the door with a sharp, ‘well then i’ll make it easy for you and just leave’

the door slams and you collapse against the back of the sofa wondering how in the world you fucked that up so badly.

//

when she doesn’t return that night you don’t worry because you know that she’s more than likely gone to stay at lincoln’s house. he lives about an hour away but he’s family to her so it makes sense that she’s gone there.

but when she doesn’t return the day after you start to get worried. you have to search the apartment for about five minutes before you finally find your phone and send lincoln about twenty concerned texts asking if she is there and if she is okay.

an hour later he replies that she is there and that she isn’t sure when she’s coming back but you shouldn’t worry because she is safe. the text mentions nothing about if she is okay or not and guilt claws the inside of your rib cage as you slump down further into the couch cushions. you text lincoln asking him to tell her you say sorry, but there is no reply.

you lay down along the length of the couch and stare up at the ceiling. you wish that you could go back and just fix everything. you wish you had told her why you were avoiding her, or you wish you had never avoided her in the first place, you wish that you had just been able to think through this clearly, you wish could go back and kiss her instead of hurting her in the first place. you wish—

wait.

and suddenly it clicks. 

//

the next day you’re up early and pacing the length of the kitchen with a coffee mug in your hand trying to figure out what the next steps are. you’ve already sorted out that you want to kiss her. great but what next. the last time you kissed her was two years ago and you’re pretty sure she only kissed you because it was a dare and she didn’t think she was going to see you again as you were leaving to go to grad school five hundred miles away.

you have feelings for her but you never wanted to rush anything because nothing ever happened in college other than the occasional flirting and acting on anything recently would be questionable because she was going through an incredibly difficult time and you were meant to be there for her not take advantage of her vulnerable state.

you’re leaning against the counter about to pour another cup of coffee when you hear the familiar sound of a key turning in the lock. she steps through the door with her big khaki coat on and looks right at you and you let out a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding.

‘i’ve got something to tell yo-’ ‘we need to talk’

your words are cut short and you feel something heavy drop inside your stomach as those words leave her mouth. needing to talk is never a good thing. 

she steps in and is removing her coat when she motions for you to go first.

you suck in a deep breath and begin, ‘im a huge idiot. i just, these past three weeks have been crazy and i’ve had all these feelings or whatever and just didn’t know what to do with them. i mean we were close in college but not like this, and i try and think about them but then you’re there and when you’re around you’re all i think about. which now that i say it out loud, thinking about you is kinda the whole point but its just, its messy. and i know im doing a shit job of explaining this but i never meant to avoid you avoid you, i just didn’t know how to organize my thoughts because everytime im around you i just want t-’

before you can even finish the sentence warm, soft, strawberry scented lips are pressing lightly against yours. she pulls away to rest her nose against yours and her hands are lightly holding either side of your head and your hands fall naturally to her hips. 

‘i just want to kiss you’ you finish, leaning back in to capture her lips again with yours. her lips move against yours slowly and innocently and a million fireworks explode in your chest with a never ending domino effect.

she pulls away too quickly and rests her head against yours and her lips lift up into a smirk as she whispers, ‘i have all these feelings or whatever for you as well’

you chuckle softly and duck your head because you just know that she is never going to let you live that one down. and yet somehow you don’t mind

// 

an hour later you’ve moved to the couch with her to watch yet another nature documentary (which at this point you’re actually beginning to enjoy) and you’re busy studying her profile instead of watching the show.

Her hair is still slightly tangled from her time outside in the cold wind and you love how some parts link themselves into perfect corkscrews while others fall into a gentle wave, you’ve only ever had straight hair and you’re jealous of her curls. her lips form a small pout as she stares at the tv ahead, and in this light you’re not quite sure what color her eyes are but you know they’re your favourite.

she catches you staring because she seems to have a type of sixth sense for that kind of thing and blushes instantly while averting her eyes. ‘i’m sorry for rushing out the other day'

you pause the tv and move to face her and open your mouth to speak but she has beat you to it.

‘i overreacted and never gave you a chance to explain what was happening and that wasn’t fair. i was just scared and hurt because this week made me realize that i have feelings for you too and i didn’t know what to do when you told me that you were avoiding me. i guess my solution is to run from things too.’

you reach out and tuck an errant curl behind her ear and take a moment to admire the freckles clustered in just one area on her nose. ‘then i guess we both have some things to work on for the future’

her eyes light up at that word, and after saying it that warm floaty feeling is back in your stomach and she smiles brightly at you as you settled back down into the couch with her and yes, a future with her sounds beyond perfect


End file.
